JACK Quartet Announces 20th Anniversary Season In 2024-2025

GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet celebrates their landmark 20th anniversary season in 2024-2025. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK is a pioneering string quartet synchronized in their mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening.

Founded in 2005, the ensemble operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music, delving deeply into challenging new compositions and musical practices outside the classical mainstream. The Sydney Morning Herald singled out the quartet for bringing "consummate instrumental mastery and unwavering commitment to presenting the music of today as a transformative experience."

Among the highlights of their 2024-2025 season, JACK Quartet officially marks their 20th anniversary with a celebratory concert at 92NY in New York City, featuring the world premiere of a new JACK-commissioned work by Anthony Cheung. In January 2025, the quartet celebrates their long association with composer John Zorn with an album of Zorn's complete string quartets on Tzadik Records and an album release concert at Brooklyn's Roulette Intermedium. Other New York engagements this season include the U.S. premiere of Juri Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons, a JACK Quartet commission, at Lincoln Center's Summer for the City festival as part of the Living Music Underground series, the 2024 TIME:SPANS festival, and Music Mondays NYC for a performance with pianist Shai Wosner. JACK Quartet also performs the world premiere of Mathew Rosenblum's Double Keyboard Quintet with pianist Conor Hanick, as well as the world premiere of Ellen Fullman's Energy Archive at the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival 2025 in Pittsburgh. Their international engagements include performances at Wigmore Hall in the UK and Pierre Boulez Saal and Konzerthaus Berlin in Germany, along with appearances in Toronto, Barcelona, and Lugano and Winterthur, Switzerland. The season also brings the European premiere of Natacha Diels' Beautiful Trouble at Konzerthaus Berlin. In addition, the quartet appears for a string of residencies throughout the United States, as well as Winterthur, Switzerland.

“JACK is energized and ready to tackle another decade of music-making as we expand our commissioning efforts in our 20th season, looking back at cherished moments while we forge ahead creating new work with our friends,” said JACK violinist Austin Wulliman. “We recall the exhilarating experience of recording Helmut Lachenmann's complete quartets while we release our complete John Zorn recordings, representing a culmination of many years of inspiring work and concerts together. We remember playing some of our first premieres at our formative home the Lucerne Festival—where we learned from the titanic example of Pierre Boulez—while we work to bring new music by Anthony Cheung into the world as part of a program that celebrates Boulez's legacy. We feel the rush of giving the first performance of Natacha Diels' Nightmare for JACK in 2013 as we prepare to give the European premiere of a concert-length happening folding in movement and multimedia that we could have never imagined, but we've gradually built toward since that moment. We see this celebration as just the beginning: the experiences, ideas, and friends we have accrued over the years are building a community that nourishes the musical impulse we share with composers and our audience.”

JACK Quartet celebrates their 20th anniversary on Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 7:00 PM at Buttenweiser Hall within New York City's 92NY. In a program composed entirely of JACK Quartet commissions, the quartet highlights Anthony Cheung's new piece alongside three other selected works including Eduardo Aguilar's HYPER and Seare Farhat's Aporias, a work blending Afghan folk traditions with Western classical traditions and reflections of the composer's background in mathematics. Completing the program is Juri Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons, inspired by the expressively adventurous music of the late Medieval period. This program will be available to stream for 72 hours following the live performance.

Cheung's work making its world premiere builds on the concept of “ekphrasis," the description or reflection of a work of art in an artistic work of a different medium, such as a poem inspired by a sculpture. Taking the process one step further, Cheung has composed, in his words: “a series of musical responses to other existing artistic responses, carried over from one medium to another and now into a third, or reflected back into sound. For instance, a poem about a painting (and vice-versa) or a building or painting inspired by a piece of music. These twice-removed reflections and moments of ekphrasis will be deeply personal and may tap into the originals but will more likely move in completely different directions.

Among their other New York engagements, JACK appears at Living Music Underground, curated by Nadia Sirota, on August 9, 2024 at 8:00 PM as part of Lincoln Center's Summer for the City. The program highlights the U.S. premiere of Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons, along with selections including Caroline Shaw's Entr'acte—a modern riff, structured as a minuet and trio, on classical forms exemplified by Haydn's Op. 77 No. 2. Also featured on this program is JACK violinist Austin Wulliman's Dave's Hocket, inspired by the image of light viewed through the intricate stained glass of a cathedral window that overlays new and beautiful forms on the ray of light itself. Musically speaking, Wulliman uses the same idea to “filter” 14th century composer Guillaume de Machaut's Hoquetus David through his own unique harmonic vision, layering an artful new interpretation on a familiar piece. The program also includes Gabriella Smith's Carrot Revolution—celebrating the power in fresh interpretations of familiar objects—and Iannis Xenakis' curvacious avant-garde construction Tetras.

On August 21, 2024 at 7:30 PM, JACK appears at New York's DiMenna Center for Classical Music as part of the TIME:SPANS festival. For this program, the quartet performs Timothy McCormack's your body is a volume, commissioned by the Westdeutschen Rundfunks for the JACK Quartet and the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. In this work, McCormack reflects on the experience of an instrumental performance as a merging of artist, instrument, and sound as they combine in a sensory whole. The strings of the quartet's instruments are tuned to looser tensions, and their bows slow to create a gentle purr that builds to an enveloping blanket of texture.

The season's international performances begin Saturday, November 23, 2024 7:00 PM at the Barcelona String Quartet Biennial in Spain. In their program Haas in the Dark, JACK performs Georg Freidrich Haas's String Quartet No. 3, “In iij Noct” with a challenging twist—playing the piece entirely from memory and in complete darkness for both performers and audience.

On December 7, 2024, at 7:30 PM, the quartet appears at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California for a performance of their Modern Medieval program, a celebration of early music featuring both original works and contemporary arrangements and interpretations. On December 10, 2024, at 7:30 PM, they are featured in a concert at the University of California San Diego in a program of new music by Rand Steiger.

On Monday, January 6, 2025 at 7:30 PM, JACK gives a free performance with pianist Shai Wosner at New York City's Advent Lutheran Church as part of Music Mondays NYC. The program includes JACK Quartet violinist Christopher Otto's Miserere, after Nathaniel Giles, the artist's contemporary rhythmic elaboration of a 16th century work by the English Renaissance composer. Wosner performs one solo piano piece, George Benjamin's Relativity Rag, while the JACK Quartet features or combines with Wosner on Henry Purcell's Fantasy upon one note (piano quintet), Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet 1931, Wolfgang Rihm's Interscriptum (piano quintet), Amy WIlliams' Cineshapes #2, and Thomas Ades' Piano Quintet.

On January 17, 2025 at 8:00 PM at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, JACK performs the release concert for their upcoming album of John Zorn's complete string quartets, due for release on Tzadik Records the same day. The all-Zorn program echoes the album with works including a brand new version of Zorn's quartet Memento Mori (recorded on the album), featuring Ikue Mori on electronics.

On January 30, 2025 at 7:30 PM, JACK heads to Canada for a performance presented by Music TORONTO at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts' Jane Mallett Theatre in conjunction with the University of Toronto New Music Festival. For this concert, JACK performs their Modern Medieval program, a celebration of early music featuring both original works and contemporary arrangements and interpretations. Selected works include Amy Williams' Tangled Madrigal and Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet 1931, as well as Christopher Otto's Angelorum Psalat, after Rodericus, a reimagining of the 14th century work referenced in the title, which is known for its rhythmic and notational imagination. The program also features Taylor Brook's Organum, Nicola Vicentino's Madonna, il poco dolce; Prisca musica caput, Taylor Brook's Ars Nova and Phrygea, and Philip Glass's String quartet no. 5.

On Monday, February 10, 2025 at 8:00 PM, the JACK Quartet appears at Berlin Konzerthaus in Germany in the European premiere of Natacha Diels' Beautiful Trouble. Developed in close collaboration over many years and premiered in January 2024, Beautiful Trouble is a concert-length production based on a five-part video series for choreographed string quartet. The work merges experimental music, video, and theater to create a sensory experience that considers our ability and desire to consume media.

In their next engagement, JACK performs at LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura in Lugano, Switzerland on Friday, February 14, 2025 at 8:30 PM. The program features Anthony Cheung's new work, premiered by JACK earlier in the season, in its European premiere. The quartet also performs Eva-Maria Houben's Nothing More, Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 5, John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts, and Heinz Holliger's String Quartet no. 2.

JACK appears next in Pittsburgh for a series of three concerts on Friday, February 21 and Saturday, February 22, 2025 at the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival 2025. In the first program, JACK features repertoire from their Modern Medieval program including Amy Williams' Tangled Madrigal, a work inspired by the work of 16th century composer Nicola Vicentino, inventor of a keyboard divided into what are now called microtones. Weaving between consonance, dissonance, and offbeat tuning, the piece incorporates intricate hocketing, choral textures, and four solos written specifically with the members of the JACK Quartet in mind. The program also includes Christopher Otto's rags'ma, an immersive triple string quartet of precise mathematical construction that marks Otto's full-length debut as composer. The next program features the JACK Quartet with pianist Conor Hanick in the world premiere of Mathew Rosenblum's Double Keyboard Quintet. Hanick is also featured alongside JACK cellist Jay Campbell in a performance of Marcos Balter's Kerning, titled for a text design term that Balter repurposes to examine the spatial organization of music. The program also features a new work by JACK's Austin Wulliman drawing on the elusive utopian concepts created by numerous early 20th century composers seeking a path forward in music. Examples include a mechanical instrument, the Rhythmicon, conceived by Henry Cowell and created by Léon Theremin that ties tones of the harmonic series to a numerically-analogous rhythmic layer. In the weekend's final concert, JACK builds a program around Ellen Fullman's Energy Archive, featuring the composer's signature “Long String Instrument,” a 45-foot-long musical installation and its namesake album.

On Thursday, March 20, 2025 at 7:30 PM, the JACK Quartet appears at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Germany, performing a program as part of the concert series Boulez 100, centered around works by the venue's namesake, Pierre Boulez, in observance of the approaching centennial of the composer's birth. In addition, JACK performs new works by Anthony Cheung and Austin Wulliman, along with Eva-Maria Houben's Nothing More, selections from Boulez' Livre pour quatuor and John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts.

On Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 11:30 AM, 3:00 PM, and 7:30 PM, JACK presents its annual Three Concert Day at Wigmore Hall in London. In the first of the day's programs, the quartet performs Philip Glass's String Quartet no. 5 and Heinz Holliger's String Quartet no 2, followed by a second program featuring Elliott Carter's String Quartet no. 5, Eduardo Aguilar's HYPER, and Helmut Lachenmann String Quartet no. 3, "Grido." In the day's final concert, JACK reprises the previous Thursday's Cage/Boulez program, featuring works by Pierre Boulez, Eva-Maria Houben, Anton Webern, John Cage, Austin Wulliman, and Anthony Cheung.

Following a residency in Winterthur, Switzerland, the JACK Quartet performs a concert program, In Memoriam Pierre Boulez, with Orchestra Musikkollegium Winterthur, conducted by Ilan Volkov, on both Wednesday, March 26 and Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 7:30 PM. Timed for the exact centennial of Boulez' birth (March 26, 1925), the concert begins with Boulez's own piece, Mémoriale, fittingly composed around a delicate flute solo in memory of flutist Larry Beauregard. The program continues with "Concerto" Dithyramb for string quartet and orchestra, composed by Wolfgang Rihm, Boulez's successor as director of the Lucerne Festival Academy. The second half of the program features Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Rhenish fair dances for 13 wind instruments and Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht" op. 4. Two additional concerts in Winterthur will follow: On Friday, March 28, 2025 at 6:30 PM, JACK is featured in a free performance of their Modern Medieval program of works by Taylor Brook, Nicola Vicentino, Amy Williams, Christopher Otto, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Philip Glass; on Saturday, March 29, 2025, the quartet reprises their Cage/Boulez program, featuring works by Pierre Boulez, Eva-Maria Houben, Anton Webern, John Cage, Austin Wulliman, and Anthony Cheung.

In their final New York engagement of the season, JACK appears at The Drawing Center on Friday, May 3, 2025 at 8:00 PM for an all John Zorn program in collaboration with violinist Yura Lee and cellist Michael Nicholas.

In mid-May 2025, JACK embarks on a tour of Alaska including an appearance at Juneau Jazz & Classics with a program featuring works by John Luther Adams.

JACK Quartet has also announced a schedule of residencies for the 2024-2025 season. From November 4-9, 2024, the quartet will be in Potash Hill, Vermont for the JACK Studio Residency with current Artists-in-Residence and 2024 JACK Studio Commission composer Anthony Cheung, plus Readings. This year's 2023-2025 JACK Studio Artists-in-Residence will be: Keir GoGwilt, Ailie Ormston, and Jules Reidy. The JACK Studio Readings Artists will be: Rufus Isabel Elliot, Ian Erickson, Toykan Efe Kahraman, Jasmine Morris,
Adrianne Munden-Dixon, Erick Odiweric, Li Cheuk Shing, and Luis Alberto Tenaglia.

From December 2-5, 2024, JACK holds a Teaching Residency at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. As part of the residency, JACK performs a concert at the university's Hancher Auditorium on Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 12:00 PM. The program includes John Luther Adams' Lines Made by Walking and Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 5. The quartet returns to the University of Iowa for a second teaching residency from February 4-6, 2025.

From March 24 to 29, 2025, JACK Quartet holds a residency at Musikkollegium Winterthur, along with a schedule of four concerts (as listed above). 

The quartet goes on to hold a teaching residency at Music on the Point in Lake Dunsmore, Vermont in June 2025, followed by a residency at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in July 2025.

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